Forum:Everyone relax...here is why.
SPOILERS AHEAD. Below is just my opinion and I may be proven wrong down the road but do hear me out and I ask not to be flamed or trolled. I can appreciate everyone's opinion. Some of us really weren't as prepared to go into the final mission as we thougth we were. In order to get the "good" ending, which stay may not be great by some people's standards, you really have to have the following: 1)Import a character with the "right" decisions having been made from the previous games. Because the game just came out, we don't really know what the right decisions were this entire time. Give it time, soon enough, we will figure out what is actually needed from our Shepards in ME1 and ME2 in order to achieve some sort of an acceptable, if not bittersweet, end to ME3. 2) Very high Effective Military Strength. This is something that a lot of people have either not understood or overlooked. I was one of those people. I had EMS of 4500 but since my galactic prepardness was at 50 percent due to lack of multiplayer gameplay, my EMS is actually 2250. This had a huge impact on my ability to "win". 3) Your paragon/renagade have to be maxed out. It has been made clear that ME3 is all about clear choices; no grey areas. If you have a maxed out paragon or renegade bar, you will be able to have certain responses in the end that I, for example, did not have. This must have had an impact on my ending. In order to really enjoy the game, you have to remember that it is about the journey. Anyone who is upset that BioWare has mislead their fans by promising that there would be endings that tended to everyone's individual playthrough is not being reasonable. Just how many endings do people think should have existed? 10? 15? 20? Imagine that you get ending 15 instead of 16 just because you did something in ME1 that you thought was inconsiquential but turned out to be the tipping point of battle...two games down the road? To me that's more forced and unbelievable than the current ending. Though I wasn't happy with my ending, I have mostly myself to blame. Even with the three overly simplistc decisons that I was forced to make, I am convinced that had I been better prepared, the one I did make would have had a better result. Some people are unhappy about the decisions that Shepard all of a sudden had to make there and then. To those people I recommend that they read up on the ridiculous amount of foreshadowing that all of the games illustrate that suggests that Shepard was slowly being indoctirnated since ME1. None of what you saw happened in the ending actually happened and it is up to you to finish the game with sufficient EMS, paragon/renagade, proper choices for the game to reveal that to you. Even then, the ending won't be happy in the traditional sense but at least it will be hopeful. Last but not least, I think that most people are angry because they are sad that the journey is finally over. We cannot play as Shepard anymore (unless BioWare does prequels) and his/her story ends. I know I am, regardless of ending. -------- I did all three of those things. My main Shep was as ready as she was going to be. The endings still sucked. To paraphrase someone else, 'I just killed more people than the Reapers do on a good cycle'. Blowing up the Mass Relays (MR), which happens no matter what you choose? Remember Arrival? BOOM! Saying that maybe it's a different sort of explosion is possible but irrelevant. If that's what Bioware wanted to get across, they should have SHOWN that a non-destructive explosion is possible! I just cured the genophage. Makes no difference since Tuchanka has a MR in-system. As does Rannoch. As does Palaven. And Sur'kesh. And Earth. Nearly everything I did in ME3 just got vaporized. Youtube the ending (I refuse to refer to it in the plural). Little-to-no difference no matter how well prepared you are. No matter what you do, no matter how well you prepare, and no matter what you choose, you are handed the same ending that does as much damage as it does good. Remember the end of Mass Effect 1? Shep lived, yes, but even if Shep HAD died, it would still have been a satisfying ending. You saved the galaxy. You did what you set out to do, and now the rebuilding can start. The sacrifice would have been for something. The current ME3 ending leaves one with the feeling that the galaxy just got one bad deal traded for another. For the sake of argument, let's say that somehow the MR DO manage to blow up without vaporizing the systems they're in. Consequence 1? Well, most of the fleets in the galaxy are now in the Sol system. With the MR gone, best case scenario is that it takes them decades or centuries to get home. Best case. Worst case takes into account that that are a lot of people on those ships and that Earth is pretty messed-up right now. Do you think that Earth is going to have nearly enough food to keep everyone alive? How about the turians and quarians, who can't eat the same food as everyone else? (Depending on whether or not the quarians unloaded everything onto Rannoch, there's a chance that they might still have gardens on board, which means that the dextros might be ok. However the game's implication is that they took most of their non-war supplies with them to Rannoch to jump-start re-colonization.) No ship is going to have food, fuel, or supplies for more than a few weeks. After that, good luck. Most of the fueling stations in the system were destroyed by the Reapers. There MIGHT be some (along with more food/supplies) in neighboring systems, but I doubt that there's nearly enough for all of the massive fleet you rallied. Even with some serious luck on everyone's sides, it's going to be a scavenger hunt journey home, and most of the people on those ships don't have a long enough lifespan to ever see their home planets again. Consequence 2? With the MR gone, that leaves a large number of planets who were specialized enough that they didn't produce all of their own food and/or supplies. (Think modern-day cities here on Earth.) They're going to have to start rationing immediately and hope they can re-tool and re-plant quickly enough to become self-sufficient. Anyone living on a space station is boned. TL:DR, you just saved the galaxy for future cycles, yes. But it would have been nice to have saved THIS cycle as well. :-( As for the indoctrination theory, that is the only thing keeping me going right now. -Moria March 19, 2012 I Agree completely with Moria, those were my questions as well and the only out come i can foresee is that everyone dies no matter what you as Shepard does. I choose to sacrifice myself so i died, big deal i can accept that, but what about everyone else!? And my squad mates, the ones that were with me at the end when i got blasted by the reaper where the hell did they go?(According to a friend he saw them bleeding on the ground after being hit personally confirm i didn't look around) How did they get to the Normandy? Where was the Normandy going? And for the record, i completed every mission in all three games back to back, went to every plant, did every upgrade, and so on. I also maxed the paragon bar in all three games, with one bar of renegade each in the first two and about 1/25 of the whole bar in ME3 was renegade the rest was paragon. (and yet somehow i couldn't talk down the illusive man at the end of the game for some reason the option was greyed out). And my endings still sucked, so that has no effect what so ever, honestly i feel like i would be better off rushing the end so it makes sense when every one dies because we weren't ready. -Stormhammer 11 here's my issue with the ending, and have to say i agree with Moria and Stormhammer 11, is that the ending just didn't add up. the issue is that we're not asking for a happy everyone lives happily ever after ending but just something that doesn't spit in the face of everything you have accomplished over the las 150 hours. no matter how much you prepare in this game it didn't matter you just get the same cutscenes and the same 3 bullshit choices. Also to add an omnipotent god-space-child character is such a cop out and just shows lack of imagination. -pnathan28 You do realise BioWare promised over 1,000 endings.--Legionwrex 00:36, March 25, 2012 (UTC)